Who’s on first? Goal-setting for contact center clarity and performance

Back in the 40s, the comedic team of Abbott & Costello made famous a skit called “Who’s on First?” The premise of the act was about clarifying a confusion of names, and determining who exactly was on first and second base. While it may seem there’s no correlation between yesteryear’s comedy routine and today’s contact center environment, the underlying theme of “Who’s on First” is the most critical component of running a successful contact center.

Sure, today’s contact centers are multi-channel in nature, and generate statistics based off of complex phone systems. Effective management continues to revolve, however, around three key questions: Where are your agents? What are they doing? And how long is it taking them to assist callers?

From here, you can replace the bases metaphor with seats, and begin to set solid goals for each agent that will clarify their responsibilities and improve contact center performance.

 

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